Handheld wireless communication devices are powered by one or more internal batteries. A major performance criterion for such devices is their battery life, and a large portion of battery power is consumed in a power amplification block of the device's transmitter. In many handheld wireless applications, a switched mode power supply, which provides the supply voltage to a power amplifier in the power amplification block, is used to reduce overall power consumption. However, this requires careful control of the switched mode power supply to achieve optimal power savings. In order to simplify control, many conventional designs use a fixed-step, or continuous control technique for controlling the switched mode power supply. However, without employing additional information, both of these techniques may result in sub-optimal power savings, may be more cumbersome to calibrate, and may have an adverse affect on the output signal's compression artifacts. With most designs, the compression artifacts are very low compared to the signal power until the supply voltage provided to the power amplifier approaches its transmit power limit at which point the compression artifacts increase.